


Heart of the Mountain

by lustfulpasiphae (miraphora)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 04:03:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6640711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraphora/pseuds/lustfulpasiphae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Deathless prompt: I cannot keep you and I cannot let you go. pairing of your choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart of the Mountain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mirabai0821](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirabai0821/gifts).



The high-arching Orlesian doors to the balcony are thrown open to the chill, crisp night air of the Frostbacks. Starlight throws the colored glass into muted shadow and shade, casts a chiaroscuro pattern across the strong, pale back, the winding scar just below his shoulder blade, the sweaty touseled curls--he had been tense with nightmares an hour ago, but now rests deeper, his fists curled into the bed linens.

She kneels, still and silent, beside the bed, knees aching despite the carpets over the stone floor. She has been watching him sleep long enough to see the creep of the shadows as the moons make their circuit of the sky. Long enough to see the sweat of his terror begin to dry in the curls at the nape of his neck. Long enough–-she hopes-–that he is imprinted in her mind, her heart, her eyes. Long enough that he will be the last thing she sees against the inside of her eyelids when she dies.

Her dagger sits across her thighs, balanced, the blade warm from her heat. She has been hesitating, unwilling to break her stillness for this.

When she is finished, she will leave him. She will wait out the dawn in the Great Hall, in her cold, opulent throne. She cannot wake with him on this, her final morning. She is not that strong. And he–he should learn to wake without her there. It will not be long now.

Fire shoots up her arm from the Mark. It buzzes through her veins up the inside of her wrist, to the softness inside the crook of her elbow, reaches her heart, which is cast in iron, in silverite, in cold onyx, like frozen dragon tears.

She is delaying to no purpose. False dawn will lighten the sky soon. He will stir, an early riser even when he has managed some sleep at last like this. 

Her eyes are merciless and empty when she stands in one smooth motion, leans over him. The blade of her dagger glints with moonlight, with starlight, with the ghastly green glow of the Mark. He never feels it.

She stills as he takes a deep, sighing breath, turns his face deeper into the pillow. Her heart stutters, stumbles, shatters.

She turns away before she can falter, the soft curl clutched tight between her fingers. Slips to the settee, takes up the locket, the heavy, dense, bronze thing–-looking Dagna in the eyes, _I need it to withstand dragon fire and the Fade, this isn’t jewelry–-I need it to…survive intact–-if._

She releases the clasp, breath still and even, not jagged at all like the shards in her heart. Sets the tender curl in the shallow well of the locket around the bit of stamped silver that rests there. Shuts it with a click of finality. Shuts her heart away, shuts the ache and the tenderness, the love…shuts it away in this bronze container the way Korth cast his heart in gold and hid it deep beneath the Frostbacks.

Later, when they assemble, she is empty and still and silent like the hollow earth. He is wounded, hiding it, forcing himself to focus on the task at hand, telling himself that this is necessary, that she must have his peace, now, with what waits before them. He makes himself as perfect a knight as he may with as little of the Silence as remains in his heart.

She is implacable, her will is iron. But under the collar of her jerkin rests her heart, locked tight in bronze warming against her skin, nestled next to the cloissone pendant with its shattered phylactery. Her eyes are yellow as a hawk’s, full of the hunt ahead, giving him nothing warm or golden on which to anchor his aching amber gaze. She gives him nothing, but she does not set him free-–she has his heart, his luck, his love, locked tight in her heart.

She cannot keep him…but she cannot let him go.


End file.
